The life of sustainability and sanity in a world that is not

Outstanding In Her Field!

What other person do you know who on her birthday would be out cutting wheat by hand? My wonderful wife, when we heard that the farmer who leased a lot of our land to plant wheat had abandoned it because of hail damage, didn’t want to leave it to simply die. After all, it might not be a good harvest for the industrial combines, but it certainly is good straw, chicken feed, and…. people feed! Right now there is over 30 acres of it just standing there.

She started messing with the idea of getting a Scythe. Not knowing much about them and not wanting to spend a ton of money should it turn out to be a dumb idea, I ordered her a sickle designed specifically to harvest wheat! What a birthday present! Anyone you know get a sickle for his/her birthday!? I’m thinking I ought never make her mad again!

So this morning out she trots into one of the wheat fields and starts hacking away! We got a couple of wagon loads; one of which we fed to the chickens and the other she is still out tying into sheafs. We watched a couple of videos on how to thresh it and process it and we may be onto something! What fun! Making our own homemade bread from wheat harvested on the farm! Whoda thunk it? Pretty sure the neighbors (conventional farmers) must think we have a serious case of the loonies.